Prompted: My song to fire

This Is My Song To Fire
By Francis Scudellari

This is my song to fire
imagined gods, tipping the balance
of an eight-pointed star;
spirited tongues that orange-blue dance

lost stories of ancient's
mother whose land-distending belly
gave violent blood birth,
spitting forth choleric streams to crawl.

Molten fingers capped by
cruel mouths, gurgle cryptic paths down
humped and wooded back, till
reaching the lip of a plunging slope,

their fierce heads droop, roiling
limpid pools to release snake-coiled steam
and entreat ill-favors
from a jealous, flood-fathering moon.

This is my song to douse
fancied demons, speeding the tumble
of an eight pointed star;
frenzied frolics to blur waking myths.

---

This poem was written in response to Read Write Prompt #90 at Read Write Poem. The challenge was to take inspiration from a photo of a street performer balancing a metal frame tipped with eight flames (click the prompt link above to see it).

Heaven's lidless eye

Heaven's lidless eye

drinks deep velvet scapes, eager

to taste liquid sparks

Hour-swept stage

Hour-swept stage, bare-faced

follows uncounted costumed

bows, taken before

a fixing flood's painted gaze

washes bound acts to pale light

Unborn

She's there, I'll find her, hasty
piecing together
this twilight's sparkling
caught in splintered hazel shards
I gather close, then spin to

cast kaleidoscope stencils
of stained eyes, dripping
twin-hearted hours, glass
tears slipping away, snapping,
spilling out timeless

grains push-pulled by moistened breaths
to dune round lank reeds
clutched in shallow sipping
the clouded puddles
of a leaky shore. That's where

I'll be, dipping abandoned
shells I'll put to ear
to listen for the whispered
tides baring see-saw fables:
her life, still unborn.

— Francis Scudellari

Lid of mottled grays

Lid of mottled grays
snapped tightly over, casting
moods to scuttle by

In that voided space

In that voided space
where mingling, light and dust danced
then fled, long-ago
heavens slowed by age, collide
a dull thud, low-pitched echoes

Low, milky vapors

Low, milky vapors
raised by the sun's softened tears
sprawl across paved stones
hissing wispy blue ballads
of their head-consuming tales

Twin hourglass tears drop

Twin hourglass tears drop,
snap to spill out timeless grains
wish-filled accounting

Chasm's sculpted edge

Chasm's sculpted edge, poised
turquoise calm pooled below, tempts
foolish leaps, joy's falls

Sadie

Blind night offers

Blind night offers end-
less forms, spirits swirl till switched
light sets its boxed traps

We all go round in circles

By Francis Scudellari

"We all go round in circles,"
science has weighed in.
Its confusion-clear voice
lithely concluding:

Leave us to walk blindfolded
in a clueless traveling,
going far enough, we'll end
where we started.

That may not surprise,
all of us tied down so long
to this marbled mother-sphere's
endless spinning,

but if science recalibrated
to measure perhaps,
it would find our orbits
are elliptic

and, like the greater bodies,
our movements, a revolving;
pulled around by someone, or
something, we love

This poem was written in response to Read Write Prompt #89 at Read Write Poem. The "challenge" is to take a news headline as inspiration. For mine, I used the story We all go round in circles by Emma Woollacott.

Not a haiku

This poem might have
seventeen syllables, but
it's not a haiku

Knobbed twigs, puppet arms

Knobbed twigs, puppet arms
string-pulled to a snared center
tap out glassy rhythms

Silence's blank weaves

Silence's blank weaves
haircloth coves, sanguine pricking
beads of when, why's drops

And an alternate take...

Silence - woven blank
rough-spun cloth draping, pricking
beads of when, why's drops

I prefer the first, others seem to like the second. Feel free to weigh in through comments...

Warm and Fuzzy

There are those moments
warm and fuzzy, when
walking my fawning pugs,
Albert pushes that flat,

wet nose to nuzzle
the muzzle of his house-mate
Lucy, as if to say:
"Hi, and bye the bye,

I'm always right here!"
After seven years, each
time he reaches for her,
I still smile and sigh.

— Francis Scudellari

If I could steal it

If I could steal it
your sadness, I'd swallow it
whole and deep, keep it
where blind, trapped, never would it
twist its dark ways back to you

Rushing low whispers

Rushing low whispers
gurgle of foreign lands, push
away loose pebbles

Sky splashed blood-orange

Sky splashed blood-orange
awe strikes the waking earth mute
webbed eyes still glued, shut
till one warbling voice sings out
a silent needing, broken

Unsugared absence

Unsugared absence
lumped in quick-gulped memories
turns a full stomach